There is an ongoing need to improve the duration of time over which gastrointestinal implants may safely be anchored in the gastrointestinal tract without occlusion, migration or other malfunction or drawbacks, particularly for implants that extend over at least a portion of the intestines.
Examples of such implants include those having flexible (floppy) sleeves extending into the intestine such as presented in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,025,791; 7,122,058; 7,476,256; 7,608,114; 7,706,973; 7,771,382; 7,815,589; 7,837,643; 8,057,420; and those having restrictive orifices as presented in U.S. Pat. No. 7,771,382. All of those patents are incorporated by reference in their entirety.